Home » How Six Cold Feet Foreshadows and Twists its Narrative

How Six Cold Feet Foreshadows and Twists its Narrative

Six Cold Feet cover art

Six Cold Feet is a fiction podcast released in 2017 and whose first season ended with episode 10. There is a second season for those interested in checking it out.

Six Cold Feet
The cast of Six Cold Feet’s first season

Music Theory and Characterization

The writer, J.M. Donellan, claims the story is about “music, mystery, and the places we escape to when the real world disappoints us.” However, the music aspect sort of gets left in the dust after the second episode. Instead, the mystery becomes the main focus. This could easily be a case of intent versus execution and how stories can change over the course of writing them. The main character — named River — will do anything to get his sister, Harmony, back home safe. Assuming she’s still alive, as it’s been more than 48 hours since her disappearance.

Both River and Harmony are musicians, though I could not tell you the name of their band. Despite starting off with some interesting music theory, the purpose of that lecture in episode two is unknown. It tells us next to nothing about Harmony. Aside from it being a fun anecdote with actual piano music, it doesn’t serve the story. Later on there are some moments when River explains the history of musical artists who’ve inspired them. Trying to remember the names of the bands or the specific details becomes not important, but unnecessary to understand what’s going on.

Six Cold Feet in the Outback

The story is set in a small town in Australia and its community feels something right out of a Stephen King novel. As the first season progresses, River’s motivations or reason for going to the ends of the earth to find Harmony become more unclear rather than more concrete. Soon the mystery becomes more about River and less about Harmony and the transition works beautifully. It’s a motivational twist, which are incredibly hard to pull off without it feeling like the author cheated the reader.

If you expect a toxic relationship between Harmony and River near the end of the season, you’re not wrong. However, you’re also not right either. It’s not a full-blown domestic abuse story where River is physically abusive boyfriend, but their relationship is far from normal.

Throughout the story, hints of River’s true life are unraveled. While working at the library, he burns library books for spouting lies. As listeners we aren’t sure what the lies are about, but it creates reasonable doubt to why River wants to find Harmony in the first place. is it for altruistic or selfish reasons?

That’s really the most interesting mystery of the story and that tension between what’s real and what’s imaginary is one of Six Cold Feet’s strengths. The details are less important and easily forgettable, giving an odd sense of presumed intentional discomfort by the end.

8 out of 10 Stars

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